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This is the third part of a special series where Denver discusses what it is that makes God who and what God is, what that has to do with Godliness, and the power thereof, and how God governs on earth as it is in Heaven.
Transcript
Christ was born a King. In fact, wise men from the East came inquiring saying: “Where is he that was born King of the Jews?” Because that was His status, that was what the prophecies said of Him. That was the role He occupied. And the person they approached to find out where they might identify the newborn king was the king of the land who knew nothing about the matter, and had to go to the scriptorians to ask them, who after some fumbling came up with “Bethlehem.” Bethlehem of Judea, thou art not the least.
Christ was born as a King, but He explained how He discharged His Kingship. In John chapter 18 beginning at verse 36, Jesus answered. This is when he was on trial for His life:
Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.
That’s the King. He suffered Himself to be surrendered into the hands of wicked men who despitefully used, abused, beat, and humiliated Him and then killed Him publicly on a thoroughfare where the notoriety of His death would be on public display. No one entering or leaving on that day, the city of Jerusalem, could do so without noticing the humiliation of our Lord. That’s our King.
He explained Himself further in contrasting who He, the King, the Almighty Father, the Wonderful, Counselor, of the end of His government there shall not be a failure of increase, He explained Himself and how He rules to his disciples. This is in Luke chapter 22 beginning at verse 25:
“And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doeth service.”
The great King came, above all else, to serve. Zion will come. It will come, not because of the worthiness of any of us, it will come because of the repentance of us, and the worthiness of those with whom God covenanted to bring it to pass, including Adam and Enoch and Abraham and Melchizedek. It will come as a consequence of the righteousness of those who went before and with whom God, who cannot lie in a covenant, made a covenant to cause it to happen in the last days. It will surely come.
Mormon wrote his book and had us in mind as his audience. After Mormon finished his book there was one reader, and that was his son Moroni, who buried it. Everything Mormon did he did for this audience today, the last days, the gentiles. As he is finishing up his record – this is in Mormon 8:31 – he talks about us and says:
“There shall be many who will say, Do this, or do that, and it mattereth not, for the Lord will uphold such at the last day. But wo unto such, for they are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity.”
There is a right way, and it will be done according to the Lord’s will. And the Lord is actively working to bring that about right now in our day. The potential for Zion and the covenants being fulfilled in our day is as great as it has been in any generation from the days of Adam until now. And yet in all those generations there have only been two successes that the scriptures have captured.
Well, the original priesthood and the original pattern will have to return in order for the last days Zion to exist. The first Zion, in Moses chapter 7 verse 13:
And so great was the faith of Enoch that he led the people of God, and their enemies came to battle against them; and he spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled, and the mountains fled, even according to his command; and the rivers of water were turned out of their course; and the roar of the lions was heard out of the wilderness; and all nations feared greatly, …so great was the power of the language which God had given him.
When the government of God is upon the earth in the form of Zion, as it was established by Enoch in his day, then God protects and defends it. God will be the force with which the nations of the earth must contend if they intend to do harm to Zion. Because it is His government, it is His handiwork, and it is an affront to Him to challenge His authority in attacking Zion, hence Enoch’s ability to speak the word of God and to have those that would bring harm upon Zion vanquished.
Hence, further, the reason why, before the Flood, it was necessary to remove Zion, because God cannot destroy the [righteous]. The wicked can destroy the wicked, and the wicked can destroy the righteous. But when Zion is here, the wicked cannot destroy Zion because God is asserting His government. And because the wicked cannot destroy Zion, and God will not do so, Zion necessarily was taken up into heaven. The same thing happened with Melchizedek’s city.
The Lord lamented: “How oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and ye would not!” There have been occasions on which it would have been possible to have established Zion, but men would not. When that happens, and men will not, the same rules apply as applied at the beginning. Hence the necessity for removing Moses out of the midst of Israel because through Moses we could have had Zion, but the children of Israel were not interested. Hence the reason why Elijah was taken up into heaven, because Elijah was an opportunity in which it would have been possible for Zion to have been established.
Well, that same priesthood which was in the beginning that allowed [Melchizedek] to establish the city of peace, the city of righteousness, the city that God Himself would defend, necessarily must return. If you look at D&C Section 133 beginning at verse 26:
And they who are in the north countries shall come in remembrance before the Lord; and their prophets shall hear his voice, and shall no longer stay themselves; and they shall smite the rocks, and the ice shall flow down at their presence. And an highway shall be cast up in the midst of the great deep. Their enemies shall become a prey unto them, And in the barren deserts there shall come forth pools of living water; and the parched ground shall no longer be a thirsty land. And they shall bring forth their rich treasures unto the children of Ephraim, my servants. And the boundaries of the everlasting hills shall tremble at their presence. And there shall they fall down and be crowned with glory, even in Zion, by the hands of the servants of the Lord, even the children of Ephraim. And they shall be filled with songs of everlasting joy. Behold, this is the blessing of the everlasting God upon the tribes of Israel, and the richer blessing upon the head of Ephraim and his fellows.
Heaven will protect the last day’s Zion. It will belong to Him, and therefore God will not allow it to be overtaken or overcome. D&C Section 45 has another prophecy about the last day’s Zion. Beginning at verse 66:
And it shall be called the New Jerusalem, a land of peace, a city of refuge, a place of safety for the saints of the Most High God; And the glory of the Lord shall be there, and the terror of the Lord also shall be there, insomuch that the wicked will not come unto it, and it shall be called Zion. And it shall come to pass among the wicked, that every man that will not take his sword against his neighbor must needs flee unto Zion for safety. And there shall be gathered unto it out of every nation under heaven; and it shall be the only people that shall not be at war one with another. And it shall be said among the wicked: Let us not go up to battle against Zion, for the inhabitants of Zion are terrible; wherefore we cannot stand.
When they came to arrest the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane after His suffering, even though He intended to submit Himself, and to be abused and ultimately killed. When they entered the Apostle John records that Christ, despite the ordeal he had just concluded, stood up, confronted them in their arms and said: “Whom seek ye?” And they said: “Jesus of Nazareth.” And He said: “I am he.” And they stumbled backwards, tripped over one another’s feet, and they fell down.
An armed group bearing swords and weapons were intimidated by the Lord identifying Himself. He made no attempt to defend Himself, but had He elected to do so, they could not have taken Him. He went as a lamb to the slaughter because he intended, though the Lion of Judah, to become the sacrificial lamb.
Heaven protected Zion in its first iteration and heaven is going to protect the last day’s Zion. As a consequence of that, the time is going to come when it will not be the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt that people cite as evidence of the power of God. You see, Egypt had to be subdued. Moses was sent to subdue them because Egypt was, at the time, the greatest kingdom, the greatest nation on the earth. Moses was sent to them to establish the government of God. When you confront the government of God against the most powerful nation on the earth, it’s the most powerful nation that must yield the field, and not the Lord.
In the last days Jeremiah prophesied that the time is going to come when the talk about the power of God is no longer making reference to what the Lord did anciently with Egypt. It’s going to be what the Lord intends to do with the last days Zion. This is Jeremiah chapter 16 beginning in verse 14:
Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers.
That will be the reference point to which people will point as evidence of God’s intention to establish His rule, His reign upon the earth, His authority over the nations of the earth.
It is going to come to pass. In your enthusiasm, it would be better to demonstrate the virtue of patience as the Lord brings His work about, than to exhibit the character flaw of impatience and enthusiasm in trying to bring about what the Lord intends Himself to cause to happen because you cannot give birth prematurely to a living Zion, or it will choke and it will die because it is unable to be viable outside of the hands of the Lord. We have to wait on Him.
Just a few random concluding thoughts:
One bit of advice: If you’re going to have a school of the prophets, you are going to need a prophet.
God’s ways are higher than man’s ways. He said this to Isaiah: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Jacob, a prophet who stood at the presence of God, expounded on the meaning of God’s mysteries to an audience that include now us. This is in Jacob chapter 4 verse 8:
Behold, great and marvelous are the works of the Lord. How unsearchable are the depths of the mysteries of him; and it is impossible that man should find out all his ways. And no man knoweth of his ways save it be revealed unto him; wherefore, brethren, despise not the revelations of God.
In other words, I don’t care if you have a PhD in theological studies, and you are the most adept scriptorian of our age; the meaning belongs to God, it does not belong to me, it does not belong to you. It is not found out by our clever or witty parsing of what it is. In large measure the prophecies have as their purpose to hide from men what God intends to do until God has done it. And then having accomplished what He intended to do, the scriptures confirm that He knew the end from the beginning. But if you could know the end from the beginning you could interfere with the plan of God by going where the prophecies say, when the prophecies say, and interfering with the hand of God in fulfilling it. Even worse still, if your inclination were to priestcraft, if you knew what the prophecies meant beforehand, you could profit from them. The things of heaven were never intended to be given into the hands of men so that they might profit from them.
We are expected to sacrifice for God. A religion that does not require sacrifice is a religion that will not produce faith. If there is one thing that is going to be necessary for the establishment of Zion, it is going to necessarily be faith. You obtain it through sacrifice. You do not obtain it through adoration, you do not obtain it through the praise of men, you do not obtain it by sitting in chief seats, you don’t obtain it by faring sumptuously and administering the wealth that is surrendered to you as if you were God. It belongs to God. It is His. You should go get a job to support yourself if you’re going to administer the tithes and leave the tithes alone.
I know there are verses that suggest that the laborer is worthy of his hire, I know that. I’m telling you it’s toxic. I’m telling you that there are, in the history of mankind, I can think of maybe five men who have lived that would be worthy and beyond corruption in occupying that role. And one of those five was the Lord Himself. Don’t look upon a passing verse as a basis upon which to revoke and to cast aside all of the other many verses, and warnings, and cautions, and prophecies about the abuse of the last days gentiles which largely emanate from the corruption of our religion because of priestcraft.
Priestcraft is toxic, not just to the listeners, but to the practitioners. If what you are saying, if what you are preaching is greeted with wild enthusiasm and it doesn’t get you shunned, then you are probably not saying anything that God would agree with.
God’s purpose is to bring us to repentance. The Lord is exceptionally positive, but He is positive in stating affirmatively the standard that is acceptable to Him. “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my name’s sake.” He expected us to be misunderstood, misapprehended, assessed very narrowly just as He was, cast out, not to be handed money and to be given a chief seat, to be adored, and to be respected.
Our challenge among ourselves, however diminutive we may seem to be; priestcraft can invade our little fellowships every bit as much as it can invade multi-billion-dollar institutions. There’s no limit on where you can run amiss.
Rest assured that God intends to establish in the last days a Zion in which we will see the return of exactly what was here at the beginning. There will be a return. The reason why they are coming to the children of Ephraim in the everlasting mountains is because there will be a new Jerusalem. They will bring rich treasures when they come because they have records that they themselves are going to need to have translated. They are going to be crowned because the Family of God consists of people who are, in fact, kings and priests. All of that infrastructure has to be put in place by the Lord before His return. Therefore He intends to accomplish this work. When He accomplishes this work, you are not going to find at the top of it a king like the gentiles expect. You’re going to find something or someone or some group who are meek and lowly, who are rather more like our Savior than the kings who ruled during our Savior’s day. You won’t find a Caesar and you won’t find a local potentate; you will find a servant.
There is a parable. It’s just one verse. It’s a very short parable. It moves along, but it’s a response that Christ gave to the question that was put to Him by his disciples asking Him: Tell us what the signs of your return is going to be. He goes through a list of things but he ends with a little parable at the end. Our translation makes it seem kind of morbid so I’m going to substitute “body” for “carcass” because it sounds like what you’re dealing with in the current King James version is morbid, not a living body. He says one of the signs that are going to be of His return is: “Where the body is, that’s where the eagles will gather.” The “body” is the New Jerusalem. The “eagles” are going to be angelic ministrants who are going to come.
There has to be an opening that occurs in order to prepare the way. The opening at this end is going to be handled by someone who has remained behind, and the opening at the far end is going to be the one to whom the assignment was given to open the way for His return; Elijah, the one who was promised.
Now, I want to be really clear. I don’t expect either of those individuals to have any public ministry again. They have a role in Zion, and those who dwell in Zion are going to have some contact with them. The three Nephites are a great example. They, like John, were given a similar ministry to remain around and to administer until the end of the earth. And they did minister. Two of the people to whom they ministered were Mormon and Moroni. They, like ministering angels, ministered to Mormon who in turn ministered to the public. They ministered to Moroni and kept his hope up in the waning days of that dispensation. But they did not minister publicly. John will have a role, but the work of Zion is the work of flesh and blood.
Men have to extend the invitation for God to return so that men who extend that invitation are worthy of His return and the Lord can safely come without utterly destroying all who are upon the earth. Therefore you need Zion, among other reasons, in order for there to be a place and a people to whom the Lord can safely return without utterly destroying the earth at His coming. However small, however diminutive it may be, there needs to be a Zion that extends the invitation for the Lord to return.
Now the good news is that Zion will be preserved. And the even better news is that all of those good people of the earth who live in ignorance but who would’ve accepted the truth if it were brought to them, they will be preserved also. There will be a mission field into the millennium.
But the really bad news is in the laundry list of those whom the Lord intends to destroy at His coming – that is the description of those who are Telestial and therefore cannot endure His presence when He shall come – all of the liars, all of whoremongers, all of the people who have taken our Lord’s name in vain having not authority, all of those who have preached for hire and practiced priestcraft. One of the reasons it needs to be eradicated before you get to Zion is so you’re not ignited like a torch head to the amusement of everyone else that is in Zion. There has to be an end of all that nonsense.
Our Lord was and is meek. When He said: “I am more intelligent than them all,” when He said: I am “the greatest of all”; there wasn’t one whit of arrogance in His announcement of that. What He was saying is: “Please have confidence in me. Please trust what I say to be true. Please recognize I’ve paid a price in order to be able to minister.”
You needn’t respect the messenger, but you must respect the message because salvation is limited in every generation to those who are authorized to preach repentance and to baptize, and if they’re not authorized then it is powerlessness. However good it may make you feel, it is powerlessness.
Well, I’ve covered the things that I was needing to cover. Let me end by saying that I don’t talk a great deal about any of the experiences, visitations, revelations. I don’t talk a great deal about any of that because the concern I always have is, that in the days of Joseph we made some foolishly laughable mistakes. Because when we had a man like Joseph walking among us, it was so easy to take our eyes off of the Lord and put them upon the man. That when Joseph got up to talk to the Relief Society in 1842 he said, “Your minds are darkened because you are neglecting the duty that’s devolving upon yourselves. You are depending too much upon the prophet.” If we don’t learn anything from that past example in failure, then we can expect the exact same outcome. We may get Kirtland, we may get Nauvoo, we may get Salt Lake City, but we will not get the New Jerusalem. We have to learn from the past errors. We have to determine not to repeat at least those. We may make new and inventive mistakes of our own, but at least they will belong to us and not be caused by our arrogance and stupidity in simply repeating what we have seen gone on before.
I don’t care how cleverly you parse the scriptures, God and God alone is responsible for causing them to be written in the first place, and He has a meaning in mind behind them. He has a work that He intends to do that they will vindicate when the work is done.
If you think that you can outthink the Lord, and you can arrive at the right place at the right time, then go ahead and buy some farmland in or around Independence, Missouri, and wait for the burning, because you’re not going to be at the right place. If Independence, Missouri was where the Lord intended Zion to be, He wouldn’t have told them in January of 1841 that He was going to make Nauvoo “the corner of Zion.” It is portable until it is fixed by Him.
Adam-ondi-Ahman is not simply a location that you can find on a map in Missouri. It is the description of an event. The event is Adam in the presence of Son Ahman, Christ. Wherever that happens, that is and will be Adam-ondi-Ahman. So buy all the land you want, build all the bleachers you expect to build. The fact of the matter is that when Adam, the Ancient of Days, returns, there is going to be an orderly process in which a king, a mortal king – it necessarily begins there – surrenders the jurisdiction of the earth back to those who once presided over it, in turn, ultimately back to the Ancient of Days. That’s why he is going to be here. He in turn will surrender it to the Father, the Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father; of the end of whose government, or the increase of whose government there shall be no end.
Christ, when He returns, will have the lawful, the legal right, to possess this earth, to rule it and to govern it. And He will come to govern it. But before that day, groundwork has to be laid. There is a process.
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The foregoing excerpts are taken from Denver’s talk entitled “Zion Will Come” given near Moab, UT on April 10th, 2016.